In England and Wales there remains a huge number of church schools, mostly Cof E and Catholic (But also other faiths) who may legally give priority admission to pupils of parents who fulfil (or claim to fulfil) a range of faith requirements? These schools currently have exemption from equality legislation , this allows them to give favourable treatment to both prospective pupils and to staff applicants on the grounds of religous faith. Any system that seeks to look at a fairer way of allocating much sought after places at the best state schools would struggle given the mixed bag of provision and admissions procedures currently in place. They include academies, LA schools, voluntary controlled church schools, voluntary aided schools and there may be some others I have missed out.
Perhaps the best solution is to have excellent local schools and based on deprivation factors fund those schools in less affluent areas more favourably to support additional resourcing.

Clare, London,

I like the observation, "Quite how far children would have to be bussed is uncertain - LA's could help" Clearly the authors have no real world experience of the daily walk to school with an Infant / Primary Child - will the child be whisked off in a bus - will I never get to stand at the school gate and meet other parents?. What happens if this form of social engineering results in my two children being sent to schools at opposite ends of the Borough so that my local school does not fill up with "middle class" siblings. Perhaps I will need two cars to ferry them there! Most Local Authorities struggle to pay for transport for disabled pupils to attend special schools let alone bussing the entire primary population about! I guess the next step will be to ration housing in my area because it will be deemed to be too middle class - newcomers will have to be moved to the nearest Council estate. I do hope that no taxpayers money has been spent on this twaddle dressed up as research.

Jeremy Noble, London,

Say I am a poor kid from a single parent background in the worst part of town. Labour, in all its generosity and social engineering experiments gives me a level playing fied. Through hard work and a little luck I come out of Oxford with a 1st and get a City based job in finance.

I have 'moved up' in the world to the professional, middle class! Amazing. I marry an equally hard working woman and we have kids.

We send them to school - and guess what - they are discriminated against because they come from a now, middle-class background.

If anyone can't see the irony, paradox and stupidity in that system then they need educating!

Edwin, Bucharest,

The methodology of this self styled national primary review leaves a lot to be desired. They had no basis for their conclusions on literacy standards, and are just using their charitable funding as a front for left-win politics. 'Twas ever thus.

John Bald, Linton,

I find these proposals really worrying. Basically children are going to be used as a commodity to engineer social change. Never ming that they grow up wanting to go to the local school with their older siblings and local friends-pack them off early in the morning to the other side of town! These proposals will not improve schools, they will just make a lot of children and their parents very unhappy. Why not invest in improving failing schools?

John, Guildford,

It's a case of chicken and egg. To say that only middle-class parents can afford to buy houses in the areas of "better" primary schools is Irish logic: the real reason why pupils in such areas do better is that they are from middle-class families. Left-wing educationists have shackled their own hands on this issue by insisting that intelligence is socially conditioned, rather than genetically inherited - despite all the evidence to the contrary that has piled up since comprehensive schools were introduced in the 1960's. Evidence, alas, has no power whatever to alter socialist doctrine - and I say that as a retired university lecturer from a working-class family background.

Edmund Burke, Kingston upon Thames, England

Maybe the schools perform better because the middle classes frequent them, or is that a bit un-PC? And what's the pointy in working hard and saving money if you can't use it to improve the lot of your offspring? As usual Labour are obsessed with "fairness and equality" which translates into straight Marxism. If people want a better education for their kids they should work harder and spend less, if they can't or won't then tough, we still need people to dig the ditches.

Doug Bates, St. Albans,

No amount of money will make less able children succeed once they've left school. The government is trying to fix the figures to make it look like they've succeeded while there.

What a tragic start to a life, thinking you're good at something when you aren't.

Also, all the parents migrate to schools, because other clever parents are there. Removing the incentive by stopping the dumbing down, will allow clever boys' maths results from poor school's to balance clever girls' english results from expensive ones.

Here I sit, the ultimate optimist, praying for MPs to be less worthless.

Charles, London,

I had never heard the term 'failing school' until I arrived to teach in the UK. Why can't all UK citizens expect their nearest school to be as good as any other UK school, or is that too simple a solution? Afluent parents will decide for themselves which schools are 'in' and which are 'out', which will tend to push examination success up a little in their chosen schools due to factors such as sensible student behaviour, reading and a spirit of enquiry and endeavour carrying a higher value inside afluent families. However, the income of parents should not affect the intrinsic quality of any school if the national school system is basically sound.
The real enemy of quality education in the UK is the Marxist Nulab ideology of 'Management Uber Alles', with it's boxes to tick and a total ignorance of what constitutes a sound education. League tables are also counterproductive as the wrong indices are measured.

Kiwi expat, London, Middlesex

I'm not so sure why this is exactly news. This kind of thing has been going on forever and still is in many places. Unfortunatly or most normal working pople we have to work twice as hard as the middle classes to get where we want. There still exists the networking system where it is'nt how good you are at something but who you know that can get you in. Most working class people have no chance when we are still faced with this kind of discrimination. We're kidding ourselves if we think that it does'nt stil go on today. This goes way back through decades, it's all about what school you went to instead of your academics. The school you attend even affects your chances for appeal. If you went to a poorer school you have little chance of getting an appeal no matter how smart you are, those from say a private school wll get the appeal because they are expected to do well. Middle class famiies expect their children to go on to universty whereas working class families are not.

Jennifer 18, Glasgow,

Once again, the onus is to bring the best schools down to a lower level, rather than investing time and money to raise the level of failing schools. It is always the so called middle class that suffers.

hamad lone, London, England